Anthology of Massachusetts Poets Part 11

If a sound as of old leaves Stir the last bed I keep, Then say, my dears: "It's old Lizette-- She's turning in her sleep!"

AGNES LEE

MOTHERHOOD

MARY, the Christ long slain, pa.s.sed silently.

Following the children joyously astir Under the cedrus and the olive tree, Pausing to let their laughter float to her.

Each voice an echo of a voice more dear, She saw a little Christ in every face; When lo, another woman, gliding near, Yearned o'er the tender life that filled the place.

And Mary sought the woman's hand, and spoke: "I know thee not, yet know thy memory tossed With all a thousand dreams their eyes evoke Who bring to thee a child beloved and lost.

"I, too, have rocked my little one, O, He was fair!

Yea, fairer than the fairest sun, And like its rays through amber spun His sun-bright hair.

Still I can see it s.h.i.+ne and s.h.i.+ne."

"Even so," the woman said, "was mine."

"His ways were ever darling ways,"-- And Mary smiled,-- "So soft, so clinging! Glad relays Of love were all His precious days.

My little child!

My infinite star! My music fled!"

"Even so was mine," the woman said.

Then whispered Mary: "Tell me, thou, Of thine." And she: "O, mine was rosy as a boug

Blooming with roses, sent, somehow, To bloom for me!

His balmy fingers left a thrill Within my breast that warms me still."

Then gazed she down some wilder, darker hour, And said, when Mary questioned, knowing not, "Who art thou, mother of so sweet a flower?"

"I am the mother of Iscariot."

AGNES LEE

ESs.e.x

I

THY hills are kneeling in the tardy spring, And wait, in supplication's gentleness, The certain resurrection that shall bring A robe of verdure for their nakedness.

Thy perfumed valleys where the twilights dwell, Thy fields within the sunlight's living coil

Now promise, while the veins of nature swell, Eternal recompense to human toil.

And when the sunset's final shades depart The aspiration to completed birth Is sweet and silent; as the soft tears start, We know how wanton and how little worth Are all the pa.s.sions of our bleeding heart That vex the awful patience of the earth.

II

Thine are the large winds and the splendid sun Glutting the spread of heaven to the floor Of waters rhythmic from far sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e, And thine the stars, revealing one by one, Thine the grave, lucent night's oblivion, The tawny moon that waits below the skies,-- Strange as the dawn that smote their blistered eyes Who watched from Calvary when the Deed was done.

And thine the good brown earth that bares its breast To thy benign October, thine the trees l.u.s.ty with fruitage in the late year's rest;

And thine the men blood has glorified Thy name with Liberty Is divine decrees-- The men who loved thy soil and fought and died.

III

Toward thine Eastern window when the morn Steals through the silver mesh of silent stars, I come unlaurelled from the strenuous wars Where men have fought and wept and died Forlorn.

But here, across the early fields of corn, The living silence dwelleth, and the gray Sweet earth-mist, while afar the lisp of spray Breathes from the ocean like a Triton's horn.

Open thy lattice, for the gage is won For which this earth has journeyed though the dust Of shattered systems, cold about the sun; And proved by sin, by mighty lives impearled, A voice cries through the sunrise: "Time is Just!"-- And falls like dew G.o.d's pity on the world

GEORGE CABOT LODGE

THE SONG OF THE WAVE

This is the song of the wave! The mighty one!

Child of the soul of silence, beating the air to sound: White as a live terror, as a drawn sword, This is the wave.

II

This is the song of the wave, the white-maned steed of the Tempest Whose veins are swollen with life, In whose flanks abide the four winds.

This is the wave.

III

This is the song of the wave! The dawn leaped out of the sea And the waters lay smooth as a silver s.h.i.+eld, And the sun-rays smote on the waters like a golden sword.

Then a wind blew out of the morning And the waters rustled And the wave was born!

IV

This is the song of the wave! The wind blew out of the noon And the white sea-birds like driven foam Winged in from the ocean that lay beyond the sky And the face of the waters was barred with white, For the wave had many brothers, And the wave was strong!

V

This is the song of the wave! The wind blew out of the sunset And the west was lurid as h.e.l.l.

The black clouds closed like a tomb, for the sun was dead.

Then the wind smote full as the breath of G.o.d, And the wave called to its brothers, "This is the crest of life!"

VI

This is the song of the wave, that rises to fall, Rises a sheer green wall like a barrier of gla.s.s That has caught the soul of the moonlight.

Caught and prisoned the moon-beams; Its edge is frittered to foam.

This is the wave!

VII

This is the song of the wave, of the wave that falls-- Wild as a burst of day-gold blown through the colours of morning It s.h.i.+vers to infinite atoms up the rumbling steep of sand.

This is the wave.